I soon became acquainted with the population, which consisted of mine host and his Chinese cook, the storekeeper and sheriff, two hundred men in the roundhouse, and two women who earned their living in a questionable manner at night and spent the daylight hours sewing and mending for the workmen. Although these women were undoubtedly under thirty, they looked aged and worn, and their hands were calloused from the needle. Every vestige of attraction had departed long ago, and I wondered how they could be so kindly and cheerful amid such surroundings of hopelessness.
At last I formulated a plan and, going to the storekeeper, who was sure to have cash on hand, I asked him if he ever lent money and at what per cent? He said, “yes,” but what security could I give? Two or three hundred tramps passed through the town every day, and my word that it would be sent to him was no good whatever. Again I went out to my stone.
A Yankee is seldom in so tight a place that he can’t wiggle out, and I knew if I could only think hard enough I could solve the problem. Going back, I said to my friend, the storekeeper:
“If you knew that there was a sum of money deposited in your name in a certain bank in Cincinnati, would you give it to me?”
He answered, “Yes.”
I telegraphed to my friend Harrison, who must have sensed that I would have trouble on the way and had told me to be sure to call on him for anything whatever.
“Place one hundred dollars to the credit of Sam Atkins in the First National Bank of Cincinnati.”
He understood, for after a cashier’s confirmation for the careful Mr. Atkins, I received my hundred, less five per cent, and was on my way again.
We were in the real West now. All along, beside the tracks, were huts built of piled-up abandoned railway ties. Here men had tried to spend the night crawling in over a fire, many having been burned to death this way. It was surely an example of the survival of the fittest. Constantly, from the car window, could be seen the former emigrant wagon trail, and everywhere were the bleached bones of bison and oxen. Every time a hill rose high enough to count, there was a little white cross, marking the graves of a baby or perhaps a wife whose ashes were scattered, like those of the engine, God knows where. No calvary could have shown more evidences of pain and suffering than the trail of these first argonauts across the plains.
A fat man on the train took an interest in me, and it flattered me greatly. I have since met his type all over the world: he is what is called in gambling parlance, a “capper.” I was dressed well and he probably thought I was wealthy, for he turned and asked me if I did not want to get off with him in Green River and go to a place where we could get beer and free lunch (then unknown to me) for one “bit.” This idea pleased me, as the meals at the stations, which included bear meat and all sort of luxuries, were one dollar. The town was nothing but sagebrush and hills, with one little straight street down to a dive.